[tor-dev] Affect of Proposal 207 on user metrics

[Karsten Loesing]

Hi Abel,

On 1/17/13 9:00 PM, Abel Luck wrote:
> Question: How does proposal 207 (relay fetching through entry guards)
> affect the user metric data?

Good thinking.  AFAICS, accuracy of user estimates shouldn't be affected
by the introduction of directory guards.  It may be that some relays
will see an even higher fraction of directory requests than they see
now, but we already keep into account that directory requests aren't
equally distributed.  See these two tech reports for more details:

https://research.torproject.org/techreports/countingusers-2010-11-30.pdf

https://research.torproject.org/techreports/counting-daily-bridge-users-2012-10-24.pdf

> Is it possible to keep that data accurate (for the current value of
> accurate)?

For the current value of accurate, yes. :)

There's even room for improvement, both for current data and for the
situation with directory guards.  The last section of the second tech
report above has more details.  Any help would be much appreciated!

Best,
Karsten